Bow Can Talk

Bow prefers carbs

I haven't been blogging as much lately. Sometimes it seems as if everything that could possibly be said has already been said. I don't want to repeat myself. But then something happens that opens up a whole new reserve of the as-yet-unsaid. This morning I got a comment on one of my videos that did just that. "If only Bow could talk, I wonder what he would say." It was an innocent comment made on one of my more popular grooming videos. Ten thousand three hundred and twenty-four views. But none of them know Bow can talk. 

I wanted to shout out the truth. But instead I had to be polite. So I answered: "Bow does talk. He spells out words. You should definitely check out the information about this in the Project Bow DVD playlist. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvKl93VPL_oNJtFvdQcpSC3WEy4bDCCpZ

You might also want to subscribe to my blog. http://notesfromthepens.blogspot.com/."

Project Bow was an ape language research project that I began in 2002. In 2007, when Bow was five years old, we had our big breakthrough. Bow began to spell out words to express what he wanted and what he was thinking. The Project Bow DVD playlist chronicles all of that. It takes about two hours to sit through it, but if you want to know about Bow's history and his language ability, then it is well worth your while.  Although those of us working directly with Bow knew that he was spelling and expressing himself -- in both Hebrew and English -- we could not prove it to the satisfaction of the scientific community. If you would like to understand why, here is an article you can read.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267568830_Standards_of_Proof_in_Ape_Language_Studies_The_Case_of_Bow_and_Literacy

As my funding was cut, I remained with Bow twelve hours a day, but I could not afford interns and caretakers. In some ways, the past ten years have been very difficult. It's not because of Bow. Bow is a sweetheart. But just not having the help I needed meant that I often had to miss some of my daughter's functions at school and reduce my social interactions with other people. Bow and I became increasingly isolated.

I did have a chimp sitter named Lawrence for most of those years. Bow spelled in English to tell Lawrence what he wanted. He spelled in Hebrew to communicate with me. During those first years, Bow would tell me a lot of things. He gossiped about the neighbors. He made up tall tales. But then gradually, as he went through puberty, he became less talkative. He was more silent and subdued. He still told me what he wanted to eat and when he wanted his blanket and made an occasional sardonic comment about the mutability of things ("everyone dies"), but mostly he kept his thoughts to himself.

Part of it was just our extreme isolation. Nothing new ever seemed to happen, and with nothing to talk about, there was a lot more silence. Then one day, about a year ago, Lawrence had to move. His wife had died, and he was starting a new family, and he let me know he could no longer sit with Bow. So that made things even harder. For a whole year, I went without a sitter, only going out at night when Bow was asleep. I missed my daughter's move-in day to college, and recently I missed one of her choir concerts, because it was held during the day. Thankfully for technology, Bow and I were able to attend the concert via a livestream on my iPhone.

And then this summer my mother, who lives in a different state, said she was feeling weak and asked me to come visit her. At first I did not know what to do. In this current age of Animal Rights activists, and with Jane Goodall getting US Fish &Wildlife to declare domesticated chimpanzees an endangered species,  thereby activating the Endangered Species Act to allow strangers to bring lawsuits against chimp owners,  I knew I could not just advertise for a chimp sitter and take a complete stranger into my home. A friend of mine who had had a stranger volunteer to help her has gotten into all sorts of trouble with PETA, because the volunteer was a mole. I would rather stay put than risk putting myself and Bow in that position.

And so I spoke on the phone several times about taking a risk on a new caretaker, and I guess that Bow must have overheard me, and he must have been concerned about that risk.

Finally, I dared to ask a friend of Bow's who has been visiting with him once a week through the grid if she would be willing to train to sit for Bow. Bow liked her, and she liked Bow, and she does not believe in Animal Rights, only Animal Welfare, so she was a very good fit. Still, it was a risk I was taking. I must have reiterated that on the phone talking to my friends in English. Bow overheard.

The thing about Bow is he files everything away in his mind, and he never forgets. He may not say much, but he knows what he hears.

The new chimp sitter is named Jessica. Bow loves her. I trained her for a week. At first she went in for only an hour. Then two hours. Then three. Until we worked up to a whole day. Bow was well behaved with her, but at first he was reluctant to speak to her. She had to coax him to spell to her. But eventually, he told her what he wanted to eat, and when he wanted to go outside, and other very mundane things. And also, he spelled "she".  "What do you mean Bow?" Jessica asked him. Bow did not answer. But later when I asked him what he had meant by repeatedly spelling "she", he answered in Hebrew that he had meant אמא -- "Mommy."

So the day came when I had to leave for my mother's house. Bow knew I'd be gone for a week, and he seemed okay with it. Jessica kept in text and telephone contact with me, and Bow and I Facetimed a couple of times during the visit. Bow was doing well. He was asking for what he wanted. But every once in a while, for no particular reason, he spelled "risk." "What do you mean by risk, Bow?" Jessica would ask. But Bow never explained. He would just go back to his usual routine, only to spell "risk" again the next day.

A text exchange between me and Jessica

Bow liked Jessica a lot. He wanted to be on good terms with her. He used the potty regularly. and he even took the trouble to inform her when he had peed when she was out of the room. (He never bothers to tell me!) But he was also concerned about "risk". He understood that he and I were taking a risk by trusting Jessica. But he did not really know how to explain it to her.  So he just kept spelling risk.

And that problem he had spelling "peed" correctly? That's a perfectly normal language phenomenon for someone who is bilingual. When he refers to that in Hebrew, he says פיפי. In English, that would transliterate to /pipi/.  So naturally, he thought "I pid" would be a good way to spell "I peed." This is not proof that Bow can't spell, so much as that he has language, and he uses it dynamically.

If Bow could talk, what would he say? Well, he would talk about "risk" and "peeing". Like anyone, Bow has a wide range of things to talk about. Some subjects are mundane and others are very abstract.

Bow and Jessica

My mother turned out to be fine, and we had a nice visit. And now that I am back, Bow is a little more talkative. It helps to mix things up sometimes. You don't want to get stuck in a rut!

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